Mattias Esbjörnsson and his colleagues at the Interactive Institute in Stockholm are designing wireless software for mobile music “socials.” But the dance parties they envision take place at 55 miles per hour. SoundPryer is a wireless peer-to-peer system for joint music listening in automobiles. Each driver becomes a mobile radio station, transmitting their digital music stream to other cars within Wi-Fi range.

SoundPryer has similarities to tUNA, a handheld ad-hoc networking radio device demonstrated last year by Media Lab Europe that enables users to tune in to other nearby digital music players, on a school bus for example. And while the PDA-based SoundPryer system can also be used in more stationary face-to-face situations, Esbjörnsson purposely kept his eyes on the road when designing the system. First of all, he writes in a scientific paper (PDF), it’s a tougher challenge than more stationary systems. The potential duration of interactions between drivers may be extremely short as the cars zip down the highway or, in the event of gridlock, painfully long. The freeway is also a decidedly anonymous zone, perfect for studying how people might react to a new social technology.

From “Wireless Music’s New Social Sound,” by David Pescovitz, theFeature.